Lie detector exposes sabotage of Proton-M booster - report

Intentional damage to a Proton rocket booster was reportedly established by a polygraph and a criminal case has been initiated, Izvestia daily quotes the Ministry of Interior. Previously sabotage was considered an unlikely option.

An investigation into the Proton-M rocket crash in April 2013
conducted by the Federal Security Service (FSB) has resulted in
establishing general proof that foreign matter could have been
deliberately placed into crucial components of the booster in
order to provoke malfunction – at the factory where the boosters
are assembled.

As Izvestia found out, the Ministry of Interior launched a
criminal case of “Intentional destruction or waste of
property which caused human death through negligence or other
grave consequences.”

It has now been leaked that the cause for a special investigation
occurred back in April 2013, when X-raying at an incoming control
checkpoint detected several unused aluminum tube seals inside the
air duct supply of the second stage engine RD-0210. If the fault
had not been noticed, it would have resulted in yet another crash
of the booster.

Emergency malfunction repairs cost about $6,000, and the $83
million launch of a booster (excluding the vehicle it was
launching) was saved.

Initially the security structures of the Khrunichev State Space
Research and Production Center, where Protons are produced, did
not pay serious attention to the incident, writing it off as an
accidental assembly fault.

But when the FSB was informed about the incident, it launched a
lie detector probe of about 15 assemblers who could have been in
physical contact with the duct during the assembly, a source at
the Khrunichev Center told Izvestia.

The results of the FSB investigation were delivered to the
Ministry of Interior and became the basis for the criminal case.
The names of the established suspects have not been made public
for legal reasons, a source in the ministry informed Izvestia.

Officially, the Khrunichev Center made no comments, but
Izvestia’s source at the center familiar with the situation said
that incidents with foreign objects had taken place before.

“They don’t report such things because they’re not sure
whether it was done intentionally or not,” the source
claimed.

For example delivery of 20-ton multipurpose lab module for the
ISS supposed to get into space in March 2014 was postponed for
2017 as pre-start quality control service at Baikonur Cosmodrome
allegedly found ‘metal shavings’ in the ducts of the module.

How this could be possible if the Khrunichev Center has a strict
quality control service of its own remains a matter of yet
another investigation.

According to Izvestia, the management of the Khrunichev Center
has been officially warned against concealment of such facts in
the future.

So far the extent of culpability of the Khrunichev Center’s staff
is yet to be established, but the source in the Ministry of
Interior suggested that one of the possible reasons for willful
damage could be low salaries at the center, which on the average
are about $1,000 per month.

When a Proton-M rocket with Russia’s most powerful Express-AM4R
communication satellite crashed on May 16, the cost of the lost
spacecraft summed up to $225 million, but what’s even more
important a significant part of Russia was left without hi-speed
internet and HD television in remote areas.

Two weeks after the crash the chairman of the inter-body
commission investigating the incident, Aleksandr Danilyuk, said
that "sabotagehas not been ruled out."

But the expressed
sabotage theory caused such hype in Russian media that it drew a
rebuke from Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin, who supervises
the Russian space industry.

“The Roscosmos disaster commission should first finish its
work and present the results to the Russian government, and only
then torment society with new theories as to what happened,”
he tweeted.

This was Russia's third launch of Express series satellites this
year. In March, Express-AT1 and Express-AT satellites were
successfully put into orbit.

A predecessor communication platform, Express-AM4 satellite was
also lost in a similar Proton-M booster crash in August 2011.

Talks about intentional damage caused to Proton boosters
particularly intensified last year after a catastrophe of
Proton-M booster with three GLONASS satellites in July 2, 2013.